Wincott Fellow: Michaelmas Term, 2014

Jiří Zatloukal – Czech Republic

Wincott Fellow: Michaelmas Term, 2014

Participation in the Reuters Fellowship has had a considerable impact on my career. During my fellowship, I was offered a new and better job as an Economics Editor with Euro Weekly, the largest business and economic magazine in the Czech Republic. I later found out from my boss that – besides the recommendations – it was the fellowship that had a decisive influence on hiring me.

When thinking about other benefits, the fellowship has provided me with a greater access to international representatives in the field of economics and finance whom I interview. Recently I was given recognition from Professor Barry Eichengreen, Berkeley, US, and Andreas Dombret, the Executive Board Member of Deutsche Bundesbank, who both concurred Oxford University’s good reputation.

I still remember my visit at the Financial Times, BBC and Reuters headquarters in London. It might seem trivial but it was good to have a look at newsrooms of big newspapers and broadcasting houses to realize that the news that I interact with every day is produced the same way as I know it from my home news desk. Of course, there is a difference in the scale of business, in the number of correspondents and broader audience due to language extension, but the principle remains that news are made by skilful individuals.

I also keep in mind the time I spent in Oxford with my colleagues from other countries ranging from broadcasters in South Korea, and European journalists to a Washington correspondent. This gave me a great overview about issues they are dealing with. And I should say, this added confidence to me when I saw that we deal with similar problems: on-line vs. traditional media, the rise of the social media role, political and economic pressures on journalists.

The Czech media market has undergone turbulent times. The first and foremost cause for this was the recent economic crisis. The foreign investors started to pull out, having seen falling revenues and shrinking newspaper circulation. Over the last ten years, the circulation of Czech dailies has fallen from almost two million to 800,000 a day. Although the traditional media market is still very strong[1], there have been significant pressures on journalists’ work caused by both the changes of ownership and the shrinking advertising market.

As local tycoons acquired most major publishing houses, journalists have felt more pressure in their daily work. Unlike a few years ago, the market is now divided between a few wealthy investor groups who seek to gain influence. They understand media mainly as a precautionary defence instrument. The owners are Czech residents and so, by nature, closer to events taking place in politics and business.

Therefore there are two kinds of pressures for journalists; the economic one that makes the publisher-advertiser relationship tricky, and the political one that may get a journalist to become “extensions” of the owners’ intentions. In both cases the outcome may be a self-censorship. Journalists’ objectivity has been reduced by up to 15 percent due to this.

Business and political journalism has been affected the most. The state of Czech journalism might seem like “hell”, as it was jokingly nicknamed by John Lloyd, the supervisor of my research project in Oxford. Nevertheless, I would dare to assert that there is also a high-class investigative political and business journalism in the Czech Republic. The integrity of many journalists has been strengthened exactly by the same adverse forces. The other good news is that the market has responded quite well to the present situation. There has been a proliferation of new independent newspapers and, as for the Czech Republic, surprisingly, mainly printed ones.

In the summer of 2014, the magazine Reporter was established by a former editor of the daily MF Dnes, Robert Čásenský, who left the post after the parent company, Mafra, was bought by Andrej Babiš (the current Finance Minister, billionaire, and the leader of the largest political party ANO). An editorial team was put together of former editors of daily newspapers. Reporter is a generous project that brings long-format researched journalism and reportages. It is funded by advertising revenues, market stalls, and subscriptions, sales via partners (e.g. airlines) and also by a newly established endowment fund for the Reporter.

A similar desire for independence prompted the creation of the Echo24 website. Editorial staff have been recruited from Mafra’s other daily, Lidové noviny. As the online edition proved not to be profitable, Echo24 also appeared as a printed weekly in autumn 2014. In 2011, a local version of the monthly magazine, Forbes, was brought to the Czech Republic. In November 2015, the same publisher started the Czech version of American Newsweek.

In November 2014 the first edition of the Czech version of Bloomberg Businessweek also appeared. Mafra has also started to publish its own weekly magazine, Téma (Topic); a first edition was published in September 2014. In addition to these, there have been a couple of new online news projects.

I should also add that if I did not obtain a fellowship, I would probably not started translating a book by Mr Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times in London. An agreement on the Czech version of The Shifts and The Shocks has been made and the book will be published next year; hopefully with the author’s presence in Prague that he kindly agreed to.

Prague, November 2015

Jiri Zatloukal is a Business Reporter with Euro Weekly, the largest business and economics magazine in the Czech Republic. Previously he worked for the Czech weekly magazine Tyden. He covers major business players in the region. He also delivers interviews with foreign economists. Recently, he translated into Czech The Shifts and The Shocks, a highly praised book by Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. Jiri has been the key contributor to the list of the wealthiest people in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2012, he was selected to join the Journalist Fellowship Program in South Korea.

[1] According to Digital News Report 2015, the traditional media in Czech Republic has the highest weekly reach (86%) of new European countries.